Active in the last 24 hours…

Online dating leads to a lot of information about your potential partner. The good is that you can see their stats: height, eye color, likes, dislikes all there right in front of you. The bad is when do you have to have the “Are we taking our profiles down now?” talk. I have been online dating for 5 years now and have had to navigate through the strange waters of what is appropriate when you meet online. However in the beginning it was all new and figuring out what rules were important to me was tricky.  April 2007, It was my first relationship since my horrible break up with the almost husband. I decided to sign up on Match and within a few days Charles* messaged me. He was cute, smart and his message was very well written. We went out had one of those amazing first dates that you annoy your friends by gushing about. After that it was a whirlwind of dating and soon after we were exclusive. I took my profile down one month after our first date, I knew that I wanted to commit to him and explore our future. When I asked him if he did the same he said no but that he hadn’t signed on because he was happy with me and would eventually delete it. So we continued dating and things were going well, I was really happy with this wonderful man. Then in June I started seeing suspicious posts on his MySpace page (this was pre my Facebook days!) Women were leaving comments thanking him for a good night, saying they missed him & worse that winking face… We all know what that means! When I asked casually who they were it was always “She’s a friend.” I asked why he wouldn’t change his Relationship Status on his page since I had changed mine, he said “I tried, there is a glitch and it won’t work.” Liar! One day I even saw a text on his phone, (stupid iPhone text preview) that said “Hi baby. I miss you & your sexy body.” When I asked him about that it was “My ex is obsessed with me.” Yeah. Fucking. Right. We had a big fight but looking back I was hoping that he wasn’t going to be like my ex, hoping that he meant it when he said he cared about me. Sometimes we are so starved for affection we will believe anything even when the glaring truth is on our face. After that fight he then made a big deal of telling me that he had taken down his Match profile and proceeded to tell me that he loved me. I had a nagging feeling he was lying, and that I was one of a few women he was dating. So instead of confronting him I signed back onto Match and looked at his profile. There is was flashing in front of me, ACTIVE IN THE LAST 24 HOURS. Not only had he been active one of his new pictures was a photo I had taken of him in Vegas. Irate doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt.

I immediately called him and asked why he had lied. He gave me some bullshit excuse about getting a message from Match about his subscription so he logged in. Let me pause right here and say, guys when you tell us this, we know you are lying. You all say this and it is the worst excuse ever. So after he stumbled over some bs excuses and kept telling me how much he loved me I finally hung up on him. We had plans that weekend and a hotel room was booked (on my work account). He patched things up enough to get to me to agree to keep our weekend plans. I arrived at his apartment and we drove to the hotel. We didn’t really talk about the previous fight, instead we chatted about our plans for that night with all of his friends. We ended up having a really great night with everyone and once again I was smitten with him. We went back to the hotel room, and after some x-rated activity we were cuddling with each other in bed when he said “I don’t want to have a girlfriend, I think we should continue dating but also see other people.” Stunned silence was my reaction. After an uncomfortable amount of silence he said “What do you think?” I said “I don’t want to see  other people. But now I know why you didn’t take your profile down” I asked him point blank if he had ever stopped using his profile, he winced and muttered some lie about how he had but my last ten years of experience watching my ex lie to my face told me the truth. I’d like to say this is where our relationship ended but that night we talked and agreed to work it out and not date other people. We dated for a couple more months and when we finally did split it was because he had 2 other girlfriends, whom he both met on Match. When we all found out about each other via MySpace no less we became friends and all broke up with him. There was a lot more drama involved but you get the point.

So what did I learn from this experience? First of all, I stopped dating pathological liars cause that dude had a serious lying problem. In fact I know his current girlfriend and if she is reading this (cause I know she knows who I am), your boyfriend still sexts me in spite of my lack of reply. He is a douche bag on the highest level. Second, I don’t post my relationship status on my social networking pages. Thirdly, if your gut tells you something is up it’s probably for a reason. Don’t ignore red flags. Lastly, if a man thinks it’s okay to call me his girlfriend but still maintain an online dating profile then I am not the girl for him. Do not request exclusivity if you don’t fucking want it. If you want to keep dating then keep dating, but be up front and honest and then we have no problem. Also all your bullshit excuses about Match emailing you and you having to log in aren’t gonna fly. If you are gonna lie about taking your page down think again, we can check on that! How dumb can you be? End rant.

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*Name changed to protect the guilty.